Between November 11 and 13 in New Delhi, a major if largely unreported event took place. The first ever national convention for nuclear disarmament and peace took place. Over 600 people from all over the country (two-thirds were from outside Delhi) representing over a 100 organizations attended the convention and helped form at the end of it all a national coalition for nuclear disarmament and peace.

It is now possible to say, two-and-a-half years after Pokhran II, that a national-level anti-nuclear and disarmament movement, opposed to what India and Pakistan did in 1998, has emerged. Of course, the coalition asserted its opposition to the other nuclear weapons states but anybody and everybody can do that. What is important is that people and groups representative of a broad cross-section of Indian civil society have come together to collectively voice their opposition to the government of India's nuclear policies and to give notice that they will be politically and non-violently fighting to reverse what has been done.

This was by many neutral accounts one of the biggest ever non-government organized conventions in New Delhi in almost a decade on any issue. It was certainly "news". Never before had there been such a gathering, including leaders of major grassroots organizations in the country from Medha Patkar of the Narmada Bachao Andolan to Thomas Kocherry of the over eight million strong National Fishworkers Union to the tribal representatives of Jharkhandis Organization against Radiation, which is fighting a lonely and courageous battle against radiation poisoning by the activities of the Uranium Corporation of India Limited in Jharkhand.

This was not all. It is doubtful if ever before in India's post-independence history had there been such a collection of eminent leaders of the global anti-nuclear and disarmament movement. They included representatives of the two largest Japanese anti-nuclear movements and Bruce Kent, one of Europe's best known public figures who led the British campaign for nuclear disarmament during the period when it mobilized millions on to the streets.

Also present were Dave Knight, current chair of CND (United Kingdom), Ron McCoy, former co-president of the Nobel prize winning organization, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; Kate Dewes, a leader of the south Pacific women's campaign against nuclear testing, expert critics from the United States talking about their government's advanced nuclear weapons research in laboratories like the Lawrence Livermore Institute, a former British naval commander, Robert Green, who was in actual operational charge of aircraft carrying nuclear weapons, and many others of equal eminence.

Yet despite the convention organizers holding four press conferences including a curtain-raiser on November 9, most papers chose not to cover it or to take advantage of the offers repeatedly made to help fix interviews with any of the visiting delegates whether from abroad or other parts of the country. Over 50 delegates came from Pakistan, and 10 more from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. These included senior retired military leaders of the highest standing in Pakistan who have been outspoken in their opposition to Chagai. All of them, including those from Australia, Asia, Europe and north America came entirely at their own expense to help forge a greater international unity among those who remain bitterly opposed to nuclear weapons of all countries including their own.

The issue is much larger than just inadequate coverage of the convention. What does it say about the nature of news journalism in the top, pace-setting papers of our country today that one such major English language daily could carry on its front page, as its lead, a story of a Russian female television newscaster who undresses while reciting the news but does not carry news of the convention even on its back pages? What are we to say when the prejudices of senior journalists (and the nuclear bomb issue is a very emotive issue) can have a determining effect on what is or is not covered by the papers they work in?

The significance of the convention was twofold - in what it collectively declared to be its aims and intentions, and in how its various constituents came together and are prepared to remain together. A summary draft charter was produced which has demanded that India refrain from further testing and open deployment and indeed that it roll back its preparations. Similar demands were made of India and Israel and of course demands were made on the US to stop its Star Wars preparations and to join, along with the other nuclear weapons states, the global effort to totally disarm.

The charter also demanded democratic transparency and accountability from the government departments responsible for the nuclear power and electricity generation programme as well as proper safety measures and full recompense to the victims of radiation poisoning resulting from the various activities related to all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. Those who know anything about the nuclear power programmes worldwide will also know that the Indian programme is one the dirtiest, most inefficient as well as one of the most secretive in the world. The Indian government certainly does not want the public to realize this but that is exactly what the new movement is aiming to disclose.

These demands, especially regarding nuclear weapons freeze and rollback, obviously constitute something of a wish-list. But this nonetheless serves crucial educative functions. To begin with, the Indian movement against nuclear arms cannot expect to have a significant influence on actual policymaking. However, governments and their policy supporters do not merely wish to have their policies established, they also want to legitimize their actions amidst the wider public. This is precisely where a developing anti-nuclear movement comes in - it aims to deliberately and determinedly de-legitimize such policies by criticizing and exposing the deceits, hypocrisies, stupidities and dangers of such government nuclear thinking and actions.

The more successful it is in doing this the more it becomes also capable of affecting actual policies. If it is more difficult to do so at the central or national level it is easier to do this at regional, state or more local levels, where many ordinary people are adversely affected by, for example, problems of radiation poisoning, and open to mobilization. The CND programme has committed itself to helping the JOAR in its fight to expose the terrible conditions that exist in and around the uranium mining areas of Jharkhand and to demand that the new state government take this matter more seriously than did the old Bihar state government or the Centre.

The other key lesson that the convention has imbibed is one that the great anti-nuclear mass movements of Europe and north America in the Seventies and Eighties took a long time to grasp. That is, an anti-nuclear movement, if it is to sustain itself, must be a movement that focuses not just on nuclear weapons or even nuclear power but on peace.

Moreover, to be for peace must mean something more than just wanting an "absence of conflict". Peace must be imbued with a positive content such as the struggle to further social justice, greater democracy, and development. That is why it is necessary to link with all kinds of groups pursuing all kinds of struggles from civil liberties to women's rights to sustainable and humane forms of economic development to opposing communalism in the name of preserving and strengthening democracy.

It is a tribute to the convention and a source of considerable optimism about the future of the CND programme that from inception it has been just that - a democratic and genuine coalition of all kinds of groups pursuing precisely these multiple issues and insisting that these specific struggles are also intimately connected to the common struggle against nuclearization of south Asia and the world.

The author has recently co-authored the book South Asia on a Short Fuse: Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament